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Itemized: The Fucking Awesome Bowie Tee

Every week a different FADER staff member will pick a clothing item or accessory that he or she has lately been spending a lot of time with—or would like to—and write a little love letter to it. We would’ve done a column on who we’re dating but that seemed a little bit much. This week Chioma Nnadi writes about the Fucking Awesome Bowie Tee.

The first time I listened to Bowie I was probably about 11 years old. My older brother routinely censored my reading materials (the first magazines I read were his copies of The Face and Arena aged 12) and—bless him!—did his best to curb my stubbornly tweenage fast food musical tendencies. For example, I ask him to buy me a Kylie Minogue album for my birthday and he shows up with a mixtape of all his favorite shit instead—some Alice Coltrane, some Morrissey and "Electric Blue," still one of my favorite Bowie songs to this day.

Since my brother and I live thousands of miles apart these days, I have a really dope surrogate in New York called Chris who actually kind of looks like my real brother too. I left my iPod in a hotel room in San Diego a few years ago, so my friend Chris lent me one from his collection a couple of weeks back. Admittedly most of the music on there (like Misfits, Ramones and almost every Bad Brains song ever made) isn't stuff I'm super familiar with which is fine, because this is exactly the kind of education my brother would respect. There is, however, a ton of Bowie I haven't listened to since I was a kid, which is why wearing a superhuman-sized Ziggy Stardust face across my heart just feels so fuzzy and warm right now.